The heavy metal workbench, covered in oil stains and rust, had been thoroughly cleaned, revealing the stark color of steel.
The scrap metal piled on the table—metal wreckage and parts scavenged from the ruins—was undergoing a transformation.
Under Cairo's dexterous hands, the laser cutter emitted a subtle, efficient hum, shooting out a blinding beam that precisely etched and separated metal. Several mechanical tentacles extended from the auxiliary support frame on his back like metal vines with autonomous consciousness, collaboratively completing the precision operations of pressing, calibration, and welding.
These discarded materials were reshaped, refined, and polished, ultimately becoming a set of practical and handy tools: various wrenches, pliers, hammers, and a clearly calibrated set of measuring instruments.
Their appearance was crude, but the center of gravity, grip feel, and structural strength of each piece had been strictly optimized, perfectly matching his usage habits.
On the other side, several broken display screens dismantled from abandoned billboards and old terminals underwent a complex rebirth.
He carefully cleaned each glass substrate, scraping away grime and scorch marks, then assembled them mosaic-style into an irregular multi-screen display array.
Still-functional chips, capacitors, and circuit boards collected from various corners of the abandoned town were cleverly connected and integrated, stuffed into a crude chassis riveted from metal plates.
When the last data cable was connected, he powered it on.
After a bout of flickering and noise, all screens lit up in succession, presenting a fragmented yet coherently running interface—a bizarre yet normally functioning temporary terminal was thus born.
The hum of fans and hiss of current became its breath of existence.
He took a deep breath, gripping the data interface cable in his hand.
The other end connected to a physical cable extending from within the wall, leading underground, possibly accessing some remnant network node.
His movements were extremely cautious. The interface slowly clicked into place with a "click."
"Alright," he murmured softly, "let's see what this crazy world is busy with." His fingertips danced rapidly across the keyboard, entering his self-written access commands: "Establishing stable connection... signal strength weak, but protocol recognizable... beginning to receive and parse data stream..."
Information trickled intermittently onto the screen like a thin stream. The speed was slow, accompanied by frequent stuttering and packet loss, with occasional bursts of snow-like noise and garbled text on the screen.
But this was no longer the chaotic electronic screech from before—it was parseable structured information, albeit fragmented and incomplete.
He greedily absorbed everything.
Broken news headlines and fragments scrolled across the screen: "Arasaka questions Militech new weapon testing data..." "Government contract review deadlocked..."
Several blurry, shaky surveillance clips flashed by: neon-lit streets, wildly dressed "Maelstrom" gang members and "Tyger Claws" warriors with ukiyo-e style tattoos engaged in fierce firefights behind cover, energy weapon beams and conventional gunfire tearing through the night sky.
Immediately after, the screen was flooded with pop-up holographic cyberware ads—"Kerenzikov" neural accelerators, "Gorilla Arms," "Smart Links"... These advertisements were flashy yet cheap, permeated with the fervor of overpromising.
Corporations, gangs, cyberware... These familiar yet strange concepts, through fragmentary but real information, gradually assembled before him the outline of this world: a world where the tech tree was both brilliant and twisted, ruled by oligarchic megacorporations, where street violence was routine, yet human augmentation was revered as evolution's direction—a world of mad yet morbid vitality.
"Interesting... truly interesting." Cairo murmured in admiration, his optical sensors slightly refocusing, lenses reflecting the streaming data points.
This world's technology, especially in bio-mechanical interaction, direct neural interfacing, and cyberware miniaturization, displayed unique and bold approaches.
Some solutions were brutally effective, others exquisitely astounding, vastly different from the Omnissian doctrines and Martian technological traditions he was familiar with, yet carving their own path.
This made even him, a Tech-Priest, feel novelty and deep inspiration, like opening a technical tome written in an unknown language yet beautifully illustrated.
His first workshop, though crude and rough—walls of coarse concrete, exposed wiring, air thick with machine oil and ozone—was already preliminarily operational.
Electricity flowed steadily through wires, powering tools and terminals; sewage slowly dripped through homemade filter barrels, becoming clear; and most importantly, data was intermittently flowing into the terminal screen, injecting nutrients of this new world into his hungry cognitive architecture.
He stood before the workbench, surveying it all—tools cobbled from scrap yet entirely his own, self-repaired and powered systems, cleaned spaces—a long-absent sense of satisfaction and control belonging to a creator naturally arose, diluting the last traces of strangeness and unease of being in a foreign land.
This place was terrible, chaotic, dangerous, resource-poor.
But as he'd expected, this was indeed a place where he could start over, even make great strides.
He gently patted the servo-skull's cold metal forehead. The skull's sensors flickered once, as if responding.
"See, old friend, what did I tell you?" He spoke teasingly. "This place may be chaotic, but at least the 'troubles' here can mostly be solved with technology, logic, and a good wrench."
He hefted the newly crafted wrench—the weight just right: "Compared to dealing with Chaos daemon whispers or Ork choppers... I'd rather face a hundred of the malfunctioning cleaning robots here."
The brief satisfaction faded as urgent practical needs returned to his thoughts.
Next, he needed to make plans.
The most pressing priority was finding high-quality energy in the wasteland outskirts of this "Night City."
That insatiably greedy ancient artifact and the micro fusion reactor in his body were both veritable "energy black holes."
Scavenging could sustain survival, but to truly establish himself, he must find more powerful energy sources.
His gaze turned to the terminal screen, calling up map data and energy network information.
Perhaps he should start with abandoned power nodes, old transmission lines, or the rumored "dangerous creatures" roaming the wasteland carrying high-energy batteries?
His thoughts ran at high speed, attempting to sketch out the route map for his first resource hunt.
At this moment, in this forgotten corner, accompanied by the terminal's low operational hum and the drip-drop of the water filter, he still wanted to enjoy a bit longer this sense of accomplishment from rebuilding everything.
Night fell through the broken windows. From the wasteland wilderness outside came distant, vague sounds of threat, but this small workshop, guarded by technology and will, had become a gradually solidifying fulcrum in this chaotic world.
He activated the micro laser calibrator. A slender red light swept across the joints of the repair arm, performing nanometer-level adjustments.
His gaze had already turned to the next project awaiting modification on the workbench—what might become the first true weapon he would forge in this world.